Killer Queens (12 page)

‘I
could
bell someone to come over and pretend to be you,’ she meditated out loud, ‘but who knows how long that’d take? I need to think about that for the future. And check out back exits. OK, Lauren, lesson bloody well and truly learned. But what are we going to do now?’

Sujata opened her mouth to say something; Chloe quickly raised her hand to hush her to silence. This was how Lauren operated, talking her thought process along until she reached a solution.

And Lauren
always
reached a solution.

‘Ooh, something popped into me head. Something I saw coming in. Hold up. What’s downstairs here again, Sujata love? On the ground floor?’

Addressed directly, Sujata could answer.

‘A Pilates studio,’ she said. ‘They’re—’

But Lauren had already turned on her heel.

‘Chlo, go into me bag and cover up every spot on your face, OK?’ she snapped over her shoulder. ‘I don’t want to see one mark on it, nothing. Then slap on lots of me Tarte blush, the gel one, but no eye makeup at all. Got it?’

Chloe dashed to obey as Lauren headed out of GiGi’s offices and clumped downstairs as fast as her high heels and tight pencil skirt would permit. A mere five minutes later she was returning, followed by a pink-cheeked, excited Pilates teacher whose enviably lean-muscled body was on display in the regulation capri leggings and bra-top vest, her hair pulled back in the equally regulation Pilates ponytail.

‘Hi!’ the teacher said, her eyes widening on seeing Chloe’s very familiar face, now even-toned (from a safe distance) and lightly flushed. ‘Wow, you’re even prettier in real life!’

‘Thank you,’ Chloe said gratefully.

‘Yeah yeah, whatever!’ Lauren snapped. ‘Sorry, love, but we ain’t got time for that. Here, put these on, Chlo. Tasmin here’s lent you a set of exercise gear. You’re going to come out of the studio, say goodbye to Tasmin – you were having private Pilates session to tone up for your wedding dress, no one’ll blink at that. Tasmin gets the publicity so she’s happy, and if she tries to tell the papers you were really up here she screws her business and looks like a twat, so she won’t be tempted to do that, will you, Tasmin?’

‘I –
no
!’ Tasmin exclaimed, horrified.

‘Good.’ Lauren leaned forward to squint at Chloe’s face. ‘Nice one – that blush makes you look like you just got all sweaty.’

‘
Great
,’ Chloe said, rolling her eyes as she nipped into the treatment room to change.

A few minutes later, her sweater pulled on over the exercise clothes, the jeans she had been wearing rolled up in Lauren’s bag, Chloe slipped downstairs and into the studio by the side door; luckily, it shared its toilets with the office at the back of the building, so had an internal door to the lobby. Tasmin, her face bright with excitement, had applied two extra coats of mascara and alternated plank position with Pilates press-ups while waiting for her celebrity ‘client’, so that her arms looked phenomenally lean and cut as she held the street door open for Chloe and posed there while the photographers sprang to life, clicking away madly.

‘Had a nice workout, Chloe?’

‘Struggling to get into the wedding dress, Chloe, love?’

‘Take off the sweater, Chloe, eh? Let’s have a look at your nice new shape!’

You never said a word, no matter what they shouted. You smiled, the polite smile that you had perfected over the years, and your security officers jumped out of the car when they saw you emerge and escorted you back to the vehicle so the waiting press couldn’t get dangerously close to you. Lauren followed behind, enjoying the attention; she was well on her way to becoming famous in her own right, with her Fifties-style airbrushed makeup, her high-piled hair, her belted raincoat and the flashes of animal print that were her signature look. You waited until you were safely in the car, pulling away, and the paps were turning back to photograph the delighted Tasmin, to turn to Lauren and say bitterly:

‘It
was
Sophie, wasn’t it?’

‘
Oh
yeah,’ Lauren said grimly, pulling out an e-cigarette from her bag and toking on it hard. ‘That fucking cunt. Know what, Chlo? I blame meself. She was only in my office earlier having a snoop around, wasn’t she? Wandered in to ask what Hugo was up to, cos she couldn’t get him on the phone and his secretary was off out somewhere.’ She exhaled smoke, shaking her head in self-reproach. ‘I should’ve known that was bollocks. That Tristram’s always around when I need to check something with him.’

Since the engagement, Chloe had moved into Kensington Palace. She had refused to live with Hugo before he proposed, though he had asked her to repeatedly; she had had an awful superstition about it. It hadn’t been so much that old line about men not buying cows if they could have the milk for free (though Lauren had trotted that one out a couple of times), but the awareness that if things didn’t work out, it would be an even bigger comedown to have moved into Kensington Palace only to leave it again.

Because, after the initial euphoria of dating a really nice guy who not only seemed very keen on her, but was a prince into the bargain, had worn off, Chloe had had to do some very serious thinking. They had kept it quiet as long as they could, but eventually, of course, the press had got wind of Hugo’s new love interest, and Chloe’s comparatively humble background had not only sent them into overdrive, but demonstrated how much the girls Hugo had previously dated had been protected by their aristocratic connections.

Posh girls, it emerged, all came from families who knew people who owned newspapers, holidayed with them in Barbados, sat next to them on the benches of the House of Lords, lunched with them at the Garrick Club. If Hugo and Araminta had had a fling, for instance, it would barely have been mentioned in the press. No one would have stalked Minty outside the South Kensington apartment building where she lived, tried to get upskirt shots of her getting out of cabs, tracked down her exes and bribed them to spill the beans on when she’d lost her virginity. It simply didn’t happen to the Mintys of this world: they were defended by their powerful male relatives.

But Chloe had no such protection. And the worst thing of all, the part that really grated on her last nerve, was that if
she
broke it off with Hugo, it would be assumed by almost every single person in the world that
he
had been the one to do it. If she moved out of Kensington Palace, having decided that Hugo wasn’t The One, the only story the media would gleefully embrace was that Hugo had chucked her out.

Thank goodness, she had made the right choices every step of the way. Taken her time to be quite sure of her feelings, moved into Kensington Palace only when she had that ring on her finger. Chosen Lauren as her lady-in-waiting, one of the best decisions she’d ever made, installing her in an office across the courtyard from Hugo’s bachelor suite of rooms.

‘Sophie must’ve had a squint at me diary,’ Lauren confessed. ‘She was smoking, and she perched on the desk and had a rummage around for something she could ash in. I bet she was really getting a gander at me big desk diary. Last time I fuck up like that. Sorry, Chloe. My bad. I just had GiGi in it, but, you know, she’s posh but she ain’t thick. She’ll’ve gone off and Googled it and called the paps pronto.’

She sighed.

‘And you know the flipping irony? I only went and got that desk diary cos I thought if I had an electronic one, it might get hacked by some bleeding journo! I don’t care if they’re all supposed to be behaving better after all that Leveson stuff, I bet they’re all still bloody at it! I’ll have to get a lock for it. Like a little girl’s diary. Pretty sodding funny, I
don’t
think.’

Chloe nodded.

‘From now on,’ she said firmly, ‘close it the moment she or Araminta come in, okay? And tell her you can’t help her, whatever she asks. You’ve got my authority to be as rude to her as you need to be.’

‘Got it,’ Lauren said. ‘The bitch is fucking with us anyway, so we might as well take the gloves off and punch her in the face with a lot of rings on.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Big, cocktail ones that really leave a fucking mark.’

‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Lauren,’ Chloe said, reaching out and squeezing her friend’s hand.

‘Not get caught out having your sodding face sandpapered!’ Lauren said gloomily. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘They shoot salt at you from a millimetre away,’ Chloe said grimly. ‘It’s like lying still while you get tracer-fired by a machine gun. Lucky I’ve got a hair appointment tomorrow – I’ve got salt crusted in my roots now. But it’s totally worth it. Feel how smooth my skin is.’

She tapped her cheeks. Lauren stroked one cautiously, not wanting to smear the makeup.

‘Bloody hell, that
is
good,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t do it meself. Low pain tolerance. But then, I don’t have an official engagement photoshoot at Buckingham Palace tomorrow.’ She snarfed a gust of laughter. ‘Bloody hell, Chlo! Photoshoot at Buckingham Palace! You bricking it?’

This was one of the many reasons Chloe loved Lauren: it was so much easier to answer a question asked with brutal honesty than one cloaked in layers of politeness.

‘Of course,’ she said, feeling her stomach tense at the prospect. ‘But I’m okay with being photographed now.’

‘You take a lovely snap,’ Lauren said. ‘Just remember to stand on his left, okay? Your nose looks straighter from that side. And your dress is flipping
perfect.
Goes lovely with that big old rock.’

She leaned over and tapped the enormous emerald ring on Chloe’s finger. Chloe looked down at it, turning her hand back and forth slowly: it was a family heirloom, which Hugo had picked because she loved green, and Lady Margaret had supervised having it re-set by Garrard’s, the historic jewellers who had once cut the Koh-i-Noor diamond for the Royal Family. They had done a lovely job. The old-fashioned diamond-crusted filigree setting had been replaced by a modern platinum frame that held the huge, oval, cabochon emerald almost invisibly. On each side of the emerald sparkled a perfect one-carat diamond.

‘
This
’d do some damage if I punched Sophie in the face with it!’ Chloe said, giggling.

‘I’d fucking
love
to see that!’ Lauren said wistfully. ‘Well, you’re going to look bleeding perfect for the pics, babe.’

‘Thanks to you,’ Chloe said with complete sincerity.

Another reason Chloe valued Lauren was her excellent strategic brain: about a year before the engagement, Chloe had agreed to be Hugo’s escort to official outings – again, Chloe had put this off as long as possible, not wanting to look as if she were eagerly pushing herself into this aspect of his life. But she had planned with Lauren how to present herself, how to work on her appearance. Lauren had told her to sort her teeth out, and Chloe had resigned herself to the necessity of Invisalign braces, which had sorted out her slightly crossed lower teeth by pulling them slowly, achingly apart, and then holding them straight until they learned, painfully, to do it on their own. Then she had submitted to regular teeth whitening sessions. And she had had to pay for it all herself, not even accepting the discounts which the dentist would have been delighted to give the girlfriend of Prince Hugo; it mustn’t be reported that Chloe was in any way exploiting her unofficial status.

It had been Lauren, too, who worked out what Chloe should do about her clothes: buy them on the high street, but have them tailored to fit her perfectly. Thank goodness, Lauren knew a Cypriot tailor who did great work at rock-bottom prices; Chloe couldn’t have afforded anything more. Chloe picked out dresses from Hobbs, J by Jasper Conran, LK Bennett, and Chris Spyrou sucked his teeth, complained about the difficulty, pointed out all the problems inherent in the alterations, and then executed them perfectly for practically nothing. Chloe was careful never to buy anything tight, and Chris’s professional standards meant he was as aware of what a dress would look like when Chloe sat down as when she was standing up. As a result, Chloe never had to worry about a wardrobe malfunction. She not only looked ladylike, marriage material, but a champion of British high-street brands.

For the shoot, she and Lauren had picked out a white silk Hobbs dress with a big green flower print. It had three-quarter-length sleeves, and was nipped in at the waist, with a full enough skirt to flatter Chloe’s English pear-shaped figure. Green patent Bertie stack heels –
not
peep-toe, they had decided. The future wife of the second in line to the British throne did not need bitchy fashion journalists commenting on her toenail polish. The dress was Fifties in style, so Chloe’s hair and makeup had been done in a sleek, modern fashion, with loose, finger-curled waves around her face; she was at the height of her beauty, her eyes glowing with happiness, the picture of a young woman who couldn’t wait to get married to the man she loved.

Lady Margaret, coming in to supervise an hour before Chloe and Hugo were due to meet the massed cameras of the press in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, nodded approvingly at the sight of the bride-to-be.

‘I must say,’ she commented, ‘you girls
do
know what you’re doing.’

‘We picked out one with a nice high neckline so we can’t see a flipping
hint
of her tits,’ Lauren said. ‘I don’t even want ’em seeing her sodding
collarbone
till she gets married.’

‘God, Chloe, your lady-in-waiting doesn’t mince her words, does she?’ came Sophie’s high-pitched drawl as she strolled into the sitting room of the Belgian Suite. This set of rooms was where eminent foreign visitors were housed when they visited London – the Obamas had stayed there most recently – and since it was on the ground floor, in the garden wing, it had been the most convenient place for Chloe to get ready for the engagement photos. Its dark yellow walls hung with Gainsborough and Canaletto oil paintings, its priceless cut-glass chandeliers and petit-point upholstered Chippendale furniture might have been designed specifically to intimidate commoners into a state of whimpering inferiority; even Lauren had glanced at the portraits of King George the Third and his unfortunate Queen, Charlotte, and muttered: